Trump’s Policies Drive Them Into Ruin and Death – Arkansas’ Farmers Reap What They Have Sown, as Shocking Images Show

The images from Brookland, Arkansas, are harrowing, even for us, and revealing at the same time: Hundreds of farmers, many with deep lines from sun and worry, crowd into a gymnasium. They speak into the microphone, they complain, they pray. “I have never been as worried as I am now about whether or not my kids and grandkids will be able to carry on,” says one. Another describes Trump’s tariffs as “ice cream on the cake of a perfect storm.” It is a mixture of anger, fear and the desperate hope of finally being heard in Washington.

But the disaster they are lamenting did not fall from the sky. It is the result of a policy that Arkansas voted for by a majority. Donald Trump’s tariffs have made production costs explode, choked off sales markets and catapulted the farmers straight into recession. Then came the flood disaster in April, which destroyed 260,000 hectares of farmland and, according to the University of Arkansas, caused 78 million dollars in damage. Rice prices have fallen by 40 percent, diesel and fertilizer are as expensive as they have been in years. “If we do not get emergency aid, one third of the farms will go bankrupt,” warns Chris King, a farmer from Woodruff County.

The irony is hard to miss: Just this spring, 70 percent of American farmers said they believed Trump’s tariffs would help them in the long term. Many celebrated his “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which promises generous subsidies – subsidies that will not be paid out until 2026. For thousands of farms that is too late. “We have to have ad hoc payments right now to make it through this year,” demands farmer Derek Haigwood. It sounds like a cry for help, but it is also an admission that the much-cheered trade war has now become a deadly embrace. The scenes in the gymnasium oscillate between devotion and indictment. “Dear Lord, we are so close to you because we work with your earth every day. We need help,” pleads one farmer. Five suicides within 14 months are reported by agricultural equipment dealers from the region, four of them in the last seven weeks – the despair is that great.

But the political dimension remains: Arkansas not only endured this policy, it supported it. Those who vote for a president who tears apart supply chains and celebrates tariffs as a patriotic weapon cannot be surprised when in the end their own harvest withers. Now the representatives from Washington promise to “take the message back to D.C.” Perhaps the money will come, perhaps not. They no longer believe Trump and out of despair grows anger, even for the dead. Until then, all that remains for the farmers is prayer – and the bitter realization that sometimes you really do reap what you have sown.